Zak BelicaDeveloper BIO
A Short Biography of Zak Belica, or, How I Started All This Racket"
I was born in the bombastic borough of the Bronx, NY, to the sound of sirens & garbage trucks. Thirty-two years later, I still enjoy noise.
Although I soon moved out of the Bronx to more suburban climes, the action of the city still appealed to me. And in the late seventies, I found a great source of action, and that was video games. Growing up, we had all the classic consoles- Atari, Coleco, even Vectrex and Bally/Midway, and I whiled away many a day getting trigger blisters. My first computer was a Commodore64, and that got me hooked on computers & music. Around the same time, another kid by the name of Mark Dochtermann was into the same stuff, so we met, and ended up being friends and doing computer music and other mischief all the way through high school.
In Boston, my official cover said that I was attending Boston University. What I actually ended up doing was tooling away on computer music, forming punk-rock/industrial/ska bands with my roommates, and engaging in general non-educational debauchery. After my truncated stint at BU, I ended up working as a software tester for
Spinnaker Software (makers of the PFS: Blunder line) and continuing my musical noisings at night. A few bad Boston winters later, I decided to look for a more temperate clime. My girlfriend suggested Seattle, and we moved there in '94. I made an initial contact there with a company called CineVox that did music and sound for commercials and movies. They liked what I was doing with music & sound, but they said it was way too scary, and that if I could harness my powers for good, not evil, I might be able to work for them.
To pay the bills, I got a job at (surprise)
Microsoft as a contract test engineer. At night, I worked away at music and sound jobs for CineVox, building my chops up to a pro level. After a few months, I was able to work full-time for CineVox, and became the house engineer, editor, and sound designer. My duties expanded to music composition a few months later, and I worked at this task until CineVox closed its doors a few years later.
After composing music and designing sound for advertising clients like Nike, Boeing, and Microsoft and working on several movie trailers and soundtracks, I was ready for a big project. Fortunately, Sin came along!
Sin rocked, and it led to 2015's Wages of Sin, and thereafter Ritual's Heavy Metal: FAKK2, Blair Witch 3: The Elly Kedward Tale, Myth3: The Wolf Age, Command and Conquer: Renegade, Star Trek: Elite Force 2, Counterstrike: Condition Zero, and Black Hawk Down: Team Sabre. It's been a thrill to create everything the player hears in each of these games; it's been a very creative and fun experience.
Selected articles from Ritual Entertainment Official Company Website
http://www.ritual.com/index.php?section=tribe&id=77&ref=tribe
Also Known As
Websites
Games CreditedBoom Blox (2008), Electronic Arts, Inc.
Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath (2008), Electronic Arts, Inc.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 (2008), Electronic Arts, Inc.
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (2007), Electronic Arts, Inc.
Depths of Peril (2007), Soldak Entertainment, Inc.
25 to Life (2006), Eidos Interactive Ltd.
SiN Episodes: Emergence (2006), Valve Corporation
ER (2005), Legacy Interactive Inc.
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (2004), Sierra Entertainment, Inc.
Delta Force: Black Hawk Down - Team Sabre (2004), NovaLogic, Inc.
Half-Life: Counter-Strike (2003), Microsoft Games Studios
Snowball Run (2003), MumboJumbo, LLC
Star Trek: Elite Force II (2003), Activision Publishing, Inc.
Command & Conquer: Renegade (2002), Electronic Arts, Inc.
Myth III: The Wolf Age (2001), God Games
Blair Witch, Volume III: The Elly Kedward Tale (2000), Gathering
Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 (2000), Gathering of Developers
Laser Arena (2000), ValuSoft, Inc.
SiN: Wages of Sin (1999), Activision, Inc.
SiN (1998), Activision, Inc.
